


Sunshine ~ Phan

by abyssith



Category: Phandom
Genre: Angst/Comfort, Cutting, Drinking, Friendship, Hurt, Implied drug usage, Love, M/M, Poetic, Possible mature content, Smoking, TATINOF, life story, tabinof, triggering content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 15:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7273912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyssith/pseuds/abyssith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel Howell and Phil Lester are living YouTube legends in the minds of countless teenagers and young adults. But few are curious to learn their pasts, the road of both prosperity and poverty that both had to travel upon to reach where they are now. It's left to speculation, as neither fully open up about it. The reason being? Well, maybe because one of the boys' pasts went something a little like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunshine ~ Phan

**Author's Note:**

> Contains triggering and possible mature content. Read at your own risk.

At five, his life was a whirlwind of new memories — the sound of merry laughter like the tinkling of water on a stream, the smell of freshly mowed grass on a Sunday morning, the touch of a petal floating down to meet the tender white skin on his cheek in the middle of spring.

At seven, his mind swirled with new people. Names and ages and voices jumbled into a ball that he so cleverly titled 'Mates' bounced around his head, reminding him of the different stories that he was slowly being told about each of them.

At ten, he began to understand the stress of life. But that was okay. The light was at the end of every tunnel, and he never once considered not picking himself up and dusting himself off whenever he tripped on a loose stone while trying to reach that light. Life was good to him, and he wanted to be good back. A good brother, a good son, a good boy.

At thirteen, the bike ride of life began to slowly get steeper and steeper as he tried to claw his way up through the tiny, surprisingly harsh society of middle school. Friends came and went, and soon enough he found himself lost as droves of groups and cliques pushed him around like schools of fish around a misfit, and he began to wonder where he would fit in — the gray duckling drifting across swampy waters, longing to join the graceful white swans gliding on heavenly wings across glittering, ethereal lakes.

At fifteen, his bike reached its peak, and then flew downhill faster than he could bear, far too fast for him to catch a glimpse of his surroundings. Soon enough he lost his footing, and the bike went too fast for him to control. Days turned weeks, weeks turned months, months turned years — and the scales never tipped in his favor. He still remembered the laughter he learned ten years ago, but he no longer found joy in it. It was directed at him, and it was bitter and mocking. He recalled the smell of grass, but there was no sense of peace in it. Instead it was shoved in his face, and the scent of untended soil and overgrown foliage made its way into his nostrils as bullies sniggered at him, twigs being poked into the skin that had been so gently cared for by his mother years ago, dirt being rubbed all over his body. He tried to hold onto the brush of a petal on his face, but it seemed far too familiar to the stinging touch of a hand on his face, moving at a velocity too high for him to see, sending him reeling to the ground, his face shades of vermillion and crimson. The bike was no longer in his control.

At sixteen, his bike crashed. The smell of grass was gone, and instead the illegal fumes of stolen alcohol clouded his mind. Bottles littered his room and darkness surrounded every waking moment as smoke rolled around his head like storm clouds, trying to obscure the troubles that he faced every day no matter how many shots he consumed or cigarettes he had smoked. Nowadays his tongue was sharper than the razor that had blemished his own skin, and even if someone had tried to befriend the wild bear, he would always shove them away with claws that glinted in the frenzied, crazed eyes of this young man. They would have to be stupid to mess with him.

At seventeen, the arms of the Internet began to beckon him in, an artificial light that began to take the place at the end of the tunnel that he had tried so desperately to run through for so long. He had ignored this gift when it was first introduced to him at fourteen, but now he wished he had immersed himself within it sooner. More names and ages and stories began to take the place of the ones he had received long ago, except this time they were more similar than his. Fascination and curiosity was slowly being reborn inside of him, a match lighting the candle of his heart that had been blown out by countless people. His fingers were soon trained to tap the keys of a keyboard instead of guiding a blade across his skin or uncapping a bottle or raising a cigarette to his lips. He dove into the depths of Tumblr and Twitter and YouTube, and bit by bit he found comfort in the fact that he wasn't alone in this fight. People faced the same things that he did, and they were succeeding in the battle against addiction, depression, anxiety — everything. If they could do it, then he could do the same. Then one name caught his eye. Phil Lester.

At eighteen, he broke through to the man, and wires and coding and commands brought their faces to each other through a pixelated screen. If not temporarily, the problems of his life were ignored as he realized that he was given a reason to smile — a pleasure he had not delighted in for years upon end. He found himself grinning from ear to ear, and suddenly his heart began to shake off the hurt and anger and pain it had been buried under for so long. He found himself shedding tears from laughing so hard at Phil's stories, and he remembered what it was like to make that sound, that sound of joy and affection and friendship. Suddenly this man was putting his heart back together without realizing it, and he finally decided that they had to meet. And meet they did, on a chilly morning later that year — October 19, 2009. They were four years apart, but it didn't matter to him. Six days later, they recorded their first video together, and he discovered that he had had the most fun then he had ever experienced. And then Phil hugged him.

At twenty, Phil moved in with him in a Manchester apartment on August 10, 2011. More stories were crafted between the pair as Phil unknowingly nursed him back to health of mind and body, repairing his bike to send him back into the thrill of the ride of his life. He still hadn't told his new best friend of the things he had done prior to their fate-written meeting, but it still haunted him — oceans of sickly bitter liquid, skies of wispy gray clouds that seemed to reach within him and tear his lungs to shreds, pools of blood that dripped down his wrists and fingers, screams and cries of self-hatred and raw doubt. He was starting to master the art of hiding those nightmares from the viewers that were steadily growing, and he tried to remind himself that this was his Golden Age. This was his time to shine. Occasionally he would accidentally mention something dark, but he passed it off as 'existential crises'. His viewers found it funny, but they would never know the true story of this once-broken man.

At twenty-one, he slipped up. Phil caught him in the bathroom one night while he was washing his face after a shower, when his fading scars were the most obvious. He had stopped cutting since he met Phil, but he constantly traced his nails over his scars, the result of an awful habit, resulting in them never truly fading away as they got covered with various scratch marks. The raven-haired man had never paid much attention to his arms, but now that he had been dressed in nothing but a pair of white cotton shirts and not a single strip of fabric covering his torso, the damaged skin seemed to gleam like a light of betrayal on his skin. That night, he had been slammed with Phil's emotions, and feelings of anger, shock, alarm, concern, horror, and complete and utter grief overwhelmed him to the point that he had simply fled from their apartment. He had broken down at an abandoned bus stop, tears dripping from between the cracks between the fingers that cupped his face and dripping onto the pavement beneath him in rhythm with the sobs that had filled the air. Phil found him, a mess of tears and cries and emotions, and sat with him in silence. Eventually Phil had persuaded him to go back to the apartment, and there he broke down a second time, but this time Phil's arms held him tightly, reminding him of the warmth of his mother's embrace. His sobs had died down to a steady whimper as the boys rocked back and forth on Phil's bed, with the elder cradling the other with protective arms, and a promise being repeatedly murmured into the wet caramel-colored hair over and over and over again: "I will never let you go."

That same year, the Phandom exploded after a video that Phil had made on Valentine's Day 'accidentally' got unshared. In it, Phil pretended to have been talking to the younger in a way that implied they were together, causing two different sections of their fanbase to clash and bicker with each other over the validation of the video. He had instantly clammed up afterwards, retreating into the depths of the room as he tried to regain his bearings. Terrible memories had overcome him in waves, and suddenly his bike was pushed back by an unseen force, like a foreboding hand that refused to let him pass. Soon he was back where he was started, and every night he would cry himself to sleep, his body shuddering and trembling as he remembered the bullies of his youth, kicking him into the dirt and busting his lip with punches, calling him a 'dirty homo'. That was the truth of the matter. People hated him because he harbored a certain fondness for men like him, though he never acted upon them. But now he was afraid that the fans, the same fans that had assisted Phil in lifting him out of the dark abyss of his depression, would turn on him and talk down to him with beliefs of his inferiority and worthlessness being directed right at him. Phil tried to talk to him, apologize for carrying the April Fool's joke through, for screwing everything up, but he never listened. It wasn't because he thought Phil was in the wrong or blamed Phil in any way. It wasn't because he held himself to fault for thinking of the idea in the first place. No, it was because he wished for once in his life that it was true. He wished that it wasn't a joke. He wished that things could be simpler. He wished that his life didn't send him torrents of rain all the time. He wished that Phil could always be there for him, every single day of his life, even when their YouTube fame died down. He wished that he didn't carry around so much emotional baggage. He wished that everything was better. He wished that he was better.

At twenty-three, one year later, Phil broke through him again. The love for Phil that he had ignored in fear of harsh reception was recalled once more, and he tended for it secretly, without Phil's knowledge. He didn't want to get in the way of anything, now that their fanbase was getting larger and larger with each passing day. They were in London now, the buzz of England. It was time that he moved on. Phil was his best friend, not his potential lover. But he just couldn't give him up. The smile, that smile that stretched across Phil's entire face, that smile that seemed to open up the heavens for just a second, just for him...that smile that melted his heart everytime he saw it aimed at him...he couldn't live without it each and every morning. He couldn't live without those piercing blue eyes gazing deep into his own when he opened them up after waking up at eleven in the morning, with their little laugh lines creasing and wrinkling around them as Phil did his little giggle that momentarily chased all of his fears and inhibitions away to make room for the joy that he experienced when he stared into the other boy's eyes. He just couldn't live without Phil, his literal, physical angel that seemed to have an endless supply of happiness and excitement, being more than his friend. But for now...he had to wait.

At twenty-four, they boomed like they never had before. The Amazing Book Is Not On Fire got published. They began writing down plans for the possible prospect of a tour, and he had never been happier or more excited about where his life was going to take him. Their fans got more and more supportive of them daily, and slowly but surely, he began to gain the confidence and courage that he needed to confess to Phil. He knew that he could mess everything up, that everything they had ever worked for could be destroyed in nothing but three, heart-felt, sincere words, like the message of a passionate priest to the church-goers. But he knew that Phil would never let him go, nor would Phil ever leave. That promise that Phil made three years ago told him that. Because Phil never broke a promise. And he trusted that. It was a big risk, but he would take it. He would die with his regrets, and he did not want this to be one of them. Phil was the light of his life, the hope that never died, the angel that had resurrected him from the cold, lifeless husk of a man that he was, the beauty that gave life color and wonder. How could something that meaningful ever be taken from him?

And so it happened. The night before they left for Florida in the US, he had pulled Phil aside while they were packing their bags into their rental car and admitted everything. The ice-colored eyes were fixed on him for the entire time, silent and still — but it was a strangely comforting silence as opposed to a dark, ominous one, like the hush of the wind on a breezy hill. And it drove him to keep going, and he never once tried to hold back the tide of words that tumbled out between his lips like a waterfall of confessions. Finally, when he drew in his breath and fell into the silence that had swirled around him the entire time, he lifted his eyes from Phil's collar, where he had been staring the entire time as a means to avoid his eyes, and met Phil's gaze apprehensively, expecting some sort of rejection or rebuke. The relief that had flooded through his veins was one of the most wonderful things he had ever felt when he saw the gentleness in Phil's eyes. He asked him if he was angry or confused or scared, still a bit anxious, and Phil denied them with nothing but a tiny smile that slowly grew into a radiant beam. Hands had wrapped around his neck, and before his mind registered what he was doing, soft lips pressed against his for what seemed like an eternity, but what was only a few moments in reality. Phil pulled away far too soon, a sly grin on his face and another vow on his lips, but nevertheless a playful one, promising they would finish their business once everything was over and done. And he was more than pleased with that solution, simply settling for a joyous hug, which Phil returned gladly. And in that moment, the stars seemed to twinkle just a little bit brighter overhead, almost as a mischevious 'I told you so'. The haunting thoughts and actions that he had been submerged in for his entire life finally washed out of his mind and left him in a wave of peace, and he knew that it was the last time that it would. His grip tightened around Phil as tears began to leak out of the corners of his eyes, but these ones were ones of happiness he had never felt before. This was Phil. His everything. The man who had flipped his world upside down. His guardian angel that had turned everything around with nothing but a wink and a laugh. His lover. His friend.

He was Dan's sunshine.

**Author's Note:**

> Ayyyyyy I'm sorry I haven't been posting anything Stucky-related! I've been quite preoccupied and frankly, I only write when I'm inspired. However, I found this Phan oneshot that I wrote a month or so back, and decided to give it to you as a, ahem, peace offering. I hope you enjoyed the angst and slight fluff and everything! Hopefully I'll be posting regularly once again sometime soon.


End file.
